mars trip sign up

Signing Up for a Mission to Mars, and Planning to Never Return

Thousands of candidates are trying out for Mars One's mission of a lifetime.

— -- Kellie Gerardi is training for the mission of her life, one from which she might never return.

Gerardi is one of thousands of applicants vying for a trip to Mars, courtesy of an audacious new company called Mars One.

Only 100 potential astronauts will be finalists, but there’s a pretty massive catch: It’s a one-way ticket.

Despite the no-return clause, Mars One said 200,000 people from around the world, including Gerardi, have applied to leave everything on Earth behind.

“I know for a fact that no matter what, in my lifetime, I’m going to space,” said Gerardi, who is newly engaged.

Signing Up for Mission to Mars With No Plan to Return

What it's like to train for a mission to mars, how mock mars mission will simulate life on the red planet.

The 26-year-old Florida native trained for the mission in the rocky plains of remote Utah, where she spent three weeks at the Mars Society’s Desert Research Station to learn what it takes for humans to survive on Mars, from moving and breathing in a space suit, to eating bizarre cuisines like zebra tarantulas, because bugs would be a food source on Mars.

The commercial space industry has boomed in recent years, with companies like Space-X and Virgin Galactic building their own rockets and spaceships in an effort to make outer space available to everyone who wants to go.

And it’s not just for sport. Some scientists believe settling other planets is the best hope for human survival.

And when it comes to colonizing Mars, Bas Landorp, the 37-year-old CEO of Mars One, and his team of space experts claim they can do what NASA, so far, has not.

“Accept the new reality,” Landorp said. “Literally everybody on the globe will be watching, just like when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.”

“We’re hiring the established aerospace companies from all over the world to design the systems, to build them, to test them, but no new inventions are needed to implement our program,” he added.

But while Landorp said the technology exists to get people to Mars, his company does not have the technology to bring people back to Earth, so the plan is to form a permanent colony with new crews arriving each year.

Of course there are extreme hurdles to overcome. Mars is about 200 million miles away from Earth, which translates to at least seven months of space travel to get there -- and no one has ever been there before.

But for people like Kellie Gerardi, the unknowns are not scary, just part of the dream.

“I think either you get it or you don't,” she said. “I would equate it almost to seeing Mt. Everest for the first time. Here is this hostile challenging environment, and either you feel a yearning to climb it or you don't. And if you don't, I don't know if--that I could ever explain that to you.”

Gerardi is planning her wedding, but says getting married won’t stop her from leaving Earth and her fiancee is supportive of her decision.

“Everyone makes the joke to us, ‘til Mars do us part,’” she said. “I'm getting married next year. I couldn't be more excited. I couldn't be more in love. Do I still see myself going to space in the future? Yes… I would go, and that's a hard reality.”

Another Mars One hopeful is Sue Ann Pien, a 35-year-old tech worker from Los Angeles. She said finding out she was a potential candidate “changed the entire trajectory” of her life, and she started a sort of Earth bucket list.

“I just took off and I went and I experience amazing things around the world that I wanted to do,” Pien said. “I was going up volcanoes in Bali and scuba diving.”

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Nearly 11 Million Names of Earthlings are on Mars Perseverance

When the Perseverance rover safely touched down on the Martian surface, inside Jezero Crater, on Feb. 18, 2021, it was also a safe landing for the nearly 11 million names on board.

How did NASA collect the names?

NASA's " Send Your Name to Mars " campaign invited people around the globe to submit their names to ride along on the rover. And people did – with a grand total of 10,932,295 names submitted. Those names now sit on the surface of Mars, written on three fingernail-sized chips on board the Perseverance rover.

How were the chips made?

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory stenciled the names onto the chips using an electron beam. The "E-beam" machine they used allows the writing of very tiny features: less than 1 micron, much less than the width of a human hair. They normally use this machine for high-precision fabrication in JPL's Microdevices Laboratory.

Along with the nearly 11 million names, engineers also included the essays of 155 finalists in NASA's “ Name the Rover ” essay contest. This included the winning essay for “ Perseverance ,” as well as the essay for “ Ingenuity ,” the name selected for the experimental helicopter that accompanied the rover to Mars.

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, before launch, the chips were mounted to a small plate attached to the center of the aft crossbeam on Perseverance, where they are visible to cameras on the rover's mast.

Also on the plate: a laser-etched graphic depicting Earth and Mars connected by the rays of the Sun that gives light to both. Written in Morse code in the Sun’s rays is a hidden message, “Explore As One.” The illustration pays tribute to the plaques on the Pioneer spacecraft and the Golden Records carried into space by Voyagers 1 and 2.

How can I sign up to send my name on the next Mars mission?

If you sent your name to Mars on Perseverance, you can retrieve your boarding pass here . If you missed out on that opportunity, you can sign up to send your name on a future Mars mission.

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Nasa invites public to submit names to fly aboard next mars rover.

Although it will be years before the first humans set foot on Mars, NASA is giving the public an opportunity to send their names — stenciled on chips — to the Red Planet with NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, which represents the initial leg of humanity’s first round trip to another planet. The rover is scheduled to launch as early as July 2020, with the spacecraft expected to touch down on Mars in February 2021.

The rover, a robotic scientist weighing more than 2,300 pounds (1,000 kilograms), will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize the planet’s climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.

“As we get ready to launch this historic Mars mission, we want everyone to share in this journey of exploration,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) in Washington. “It’s an exciting time for NASA, as we embark on this voyage to answer profound questions about our neighboring planet, and even the origins of life itself.”

The opportunity to send your name to Mars comes with a souvenir boarding pass and “frequent flyer” points. This is part of a public engagement campaign to highlight missions involved with NASA’s journey from the Moon to Mars. Miles (or kilometers) are awarded for each “flight,” with corresponding digital mission patches available for download. More than 2 million names flew on NASA’s InSight mission to Mars, giving each “flyer” about 300 million frequent flyer miles (nearly 500 million frequent flyer kilometers).

From now until Sept. 30, you can add your name to the list and obtain a souvenir boarding pass to Mars here:

The Microdevices Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, will use an electron beam to stencil the submitted names onto a silicon chip with lines of text smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair (75 nanometers). At that size, more than a million names can be written on a single dime-size chip. The chip (or chips) will ride on the rover under a glass cover.

NASA will use Mars 2020 and other missions to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. As another step toward that goal, NASA is returning American astronauts to the Moon in 2024. Government, industry and international partners will join NASA in a global effort to build and test the systems needed for human missions to Mars and beyond.

The Mars 2020 Project at JPL manages rover development for SMD. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for launch management. Mars 2020 will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

For more information on Mars 2020, visit:

For more about NASA’s Moon to Mars plans, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars -end-

Dwayne Brown / Alana Johnson Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1726 / 202-358-1501 [email protected] / [email protected] Jia-Rui Cook / DC Agle Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-354-0724 / 818-393-9011 [email protected] / [email protected]